Whether you think of it as an ethos, a business plan, a marketing ploy or some combination of the three, there is no disputing that the farm-to-table concept — which has seen restaurants of all denominations commit to buying as much local, sustainably produced comestibles as their clientele will support — continues to pick up a momentum that would have...

The year after college, when most of my friends were backpacking through Europe, zigzagging their way across the Continent in an if-this-is-Thursday-it-must-be-Belgium kind of way, I spent a half-year in Italy. Northern Italy, to be exact: in six months, I never made it south of Florence. Or north of the Veneto. I never even saw a coastline. While my friends...